o render these
differences as little conspicuous as possible. The whole system of
Rome tended to train up her burgesses on an average as sound and
capable, but not to bring into prominence the gifts of genius. The
growth of culture among the Romans did not at all keep pace with the
development of the power of their community, and it was instinctively
repressed rather than promoted by those in power. That there should
be rich and poor, could not be prevented; but (as in a genuine
community of farmers) the farmer as well as the day-labourer
personally guided the plough, and even for the rich the good economic
rule held good that they should live with uniform frugality and above
all should hoard no unproductive capital at home--excepting the
salt-cellar and the sacrificial ladle, no silver articles were at
this period seen in any Roman house. Nor was this of little moment.
In the mighty successes which the Roman community externally achieved
during the century from the last Veientine down to the Pyrrhic war we
perceive that the patriciate has now given place to the farmers; that
the fall of the highborn Fabian would have been not more and not less
lamented by the whole community than the fall of the plebeian Decian
was lamented alike by plebeians and patricians; that the consulate did
not of itself fall even to the wealthiest aristocrat; and that a poor
husbandman from Sabina, Manius Curius, could conquer king Pyrrhus in
the field of battle and chase him out of Italy, without ceasing to be
a simple Sabine farmer and to cultivate in person his own bread-corn.

New Aristocracy

In regard however to this imposing republican equality we must not
overlook the fact that it was to a considerable extent only formal,
and that an aristocracy of a very decided stamp grew out of it or
rather was contained in it from the very first. The non-patrician
families of wealth and consideration had long ago separated from the
plebs, and leagued themselves with the patriciate in the participation
of senatorial rights and in the prosecution of a policy distinct from
that of the plebs and very often counteracting it. The Licinian laws
abrogated the legal distinctions within the ranks of the aristocracy,
and changed the character of the barrier which excluded the plebeian
from the government, so that it was no longer a hindrance unalterable
in law, but one, not indeed insurmountable, but yet difficult to be
surmounted in practice. In both